The Zombie Apocalypse Difficulty
by Matriaya
Summary: A zombie apocalypse sweeps the nation, and Penny and the guys wait it out in their apartment. Through the stress, the anger, and the chaos, feelings and emotions are realized. Sheldon/Penny
1. Chapter 1

**BEFORE:**

When Penny stumbled upon Sheldon and Leonard's stockpile of non-pershiable food items, blunt instruments, and guns, she nearly laughed herself out of the apartment.

"It's our zombie survival stash," Leonard explained, turning slightly red in the face as his embarrassment got the best of him. Sheldon, on the other hand, stayed entirely stone-faced as he calmly announced,

"It's an important thing to have, Penny. When the zombies come, will you be ready?"

It didn't matter that she had more experience with guns – real guns – then them, Raj, and Howard put together, or that she was the best shot. It still seemed weird that these two nerds with no real life experience – who's biggest violent threat involved wedgies and swirlies – would stockpile weapons. Even if it was for an event that would never happen.

"I figured I'd come stay with you guys." She grinned. Leonard gave her a sloppy smile. In his mind, he would arrive just in time to save her from the zombie invasion, snatch her hand while the hoards descended, and they would both run to safety, just in time to have hot, end-of-the-world sex on his kitchen floor. After securing the exits, of course.

Sheldon just gave her an approving nod.

"That's the best course of action. Of anyone in this building, we are by far the most prepared, and you wouldn't last ten minutes on your own over there."

Coming from him, it was practically a compliment.

**THE BEGINNING:**

Penny awoke to the sound of a scream. One shrill scream that seemed to last a good ten seconds before the body that carried it numbed over with shock and crumpled to the ground. At first, she thought she was dreaming. Back home, screaming was definitely not uncommon, especially at night when the bars let out and all the drunks stumbled home to their angry families. Even screams of horror were sadly not too foreign to her ears. This one rattled her out of a deep sleep, however, enough to have her pulling the covers a bit tighter around her chin.

A half an hour went by and silence crept over the scene just enough to tug her gently into a lulled, half-asleep state again. Then the jarring crunch of breaking class ripped the silence open again, and Penny gave up on trying to sleep. She threw the covers off her bed in a huff, ignoring the nagging fear that tugged at the back of her mind, and crossed the hallway to Sheldon and Leonard's apartment.

These weren't her normal friendly knocks. Oh no, she banged on their door. It wasn't that she was mad at them, just pissed off that she had a long day at the Cheesecake Factory tomorrow, and the street dramatics were thoroughly pissing her off.

"Sheldon! Leonard!" she barked into the eerie quiet.

Whatever else happened, she wouldn't admit that she had knocked on their door in the middle of the night because she was scared to be alone. There was some shuffling behind the door, a loud thunk followed by a very colorful word uttered by Leonard, and then more shuffling.

"Penny?" A voice tinted with fear called softly through the door.  
"Yes it's me. Who else would be knocking on your door at 2:00 am?"

A series of locks clicked open with pops, and then the door crept open just a crack. Leonard's pale face peered back at her. Immediately, all her anger at the night drained away. She'd seen him look nervous plenty of times - the terrified mask of a nerd about to enter into an intimate social situation - but never like this. This was entirely different.  
"Sweetie, what's wrong?"

He pulled the door open slowly, stuck his head out, and peered down the stairwell. His hand flopped aimlessly back and forth as he waved her forward.  
"You'd better come inside." he murmured. The minute she was through the door frame, he went about locking everything up again. Penny hadn't remembered them having so many locks on the door before.

"What's going on? You look like you've seen a ghost." she touched his shoulder gently, rubbing in slow circles across the flannel of his nightgown.  
Without a word, he pointed towards the window.

"We need to board that up." He muttered to himself. She moved across the room silently, then peered down into the street. In the harsh orange glow of the street lamps, she saw him. His skin adapted a strange, ethereal glow against the florescence of the lights. It took her a long moment to realize exactly what she was witnessing. Below the seemingly heaving man lay a woman, eyes open and glassy, with blood splashed on her face. Penny had seen too many cop dramas to know a dead person when she saw one. What she wasn't expecting, however, was the manner of her death.

As the man pulled away from her body, Penny caught a glimpse of the strings of flesh and blood that dangled from his mouth. Her blood looked brown, leaking slowly into the cracks of the pavement. He was eating her, ripping the guts from her stomach and shoving them into his mouth with grunts akin to an animal, caught in a frenzy.

He had no perception of his surroundings, of the woman that watched him from the third floor window, of the blue eyes that stared past him into death itself. He knew only the sweet taste of blood as it leaked into his own dying body, and his insatiable need to feed.

"Oh my God." Penny whispered. Her first reaction should have been to vomit, but she was in too much shock. It wasn't real. It couldn't be. In the distance, another window shattered into fragments, and a car alarm screeched a warning to the neighborhood.

"What the hell is going on?"  
The sound of a rifle being cocked made them both jump. They looked over to see Sheldon step out of the hallway, hunting rifle in hand, and a look of fierce determination on his face.

His voice was gravel as he whispered,  
"It's starting."


	2. Chapter 2

**The Rescue:**

Two days had passed, and Penny convinced herself that the horrors she'd seen in the street was nothing more than a drunk turned very homicidal. There was no way the boys were right. Zombies? Impossible. This wasn't _Shaun of the Dead_ for Christ's sake. Still, she kept the gun that her daddy had given her on the bedside table, fully loaded, just in case. Howard and Raj had already moved into the boys' apartment with supplies of their own. Howard made an obligatory end-of-the-world sex joke, but his eyes lingered on her just long enough to let her know he was completely serious. She laughed it off, rolling her eyes and making a pithy remark, but their proactive scheming was making her very nervous. The seeming murder she'd witnessed wasn't the only one to happened in California, said CNN.

There was, in fact, quite a few gut-munching maniacs roaming the streets. The CDC was being called in to assess the situation. They were a breath away from dropping the Big O - and not the Big O that Penny enjoyed. There were whispers of an outbreak.

She was going to take off work anyway, but was conveniently relieved of that task when a crazed costumer, pale and dull, stumbled into the restaurant and began attacking patrons. The chaotic rush to escape the mad man resulted in several tables being destroyed, the hostess missing a sizable chunk of her leg muscle. The Cheesecake Factory had been closed for repairs for several days, which is why Penny had all the free time she wanted to obsessively watch CNN.

It wasn't a big deal, she told herself, people got sick all the time. People also did really stupid stuff all the time, and fear only increased said stupidity. That was her story and she was sticking to it. There was no need to get herself worked up over nothing.

Then the crashes began downstairs. Drunk people, she figured. Loud crashes were normal for a Friday night. Perhaps it was a little early, but it was 5 o'clock somewhere, right? The crashes were quickly followed by screams, and Penny knew it was time to gear up. Whatever it was that decided to rampage the first floor definitely wasn't zombies, she told herself as she went to grab her gun off her bedside table, but that didn't mean she had to leave her apartment door unlocked for them to just stroll in.

She made a quick inventory of everything. Gun: check. Bullets: check. Baseball bat she would use should she run out of bullets: check. It had been a while since she'd last fired her weapon, after all, it might jam. Daddy always said have a back up. Never rely totally on the guns. He said the same thing about men. Penny even pulled on her lucky "Slugger" cap. It would make her look more menacing, she assured herself, not quite ready to admit she put it on because it made her feel safe. The weight of the gun felt almost foreign in her hand.

It had been so long since she'd had to fire the thing, she hardly remembered the shape and weight of it. So focused was her gaze on the gun that she didn't notice her door was wide open until the intruder was almost on top of her. It was Jim in room 1a, she realized with the half of her brain that was still functioning. What the hell...? His meaty fingers grasped at the thin blue materials of her shirt, one hand clamping down on her breast in an effort to draw her closer to him.

"Eww! Get off!" She shrieked. Working in a bar had given her plenty of experiences shaking off drunken leches. He was no different. Except he was. There was blood all along his mouth, dribbling down his shirt. His stomach had a nasty gash in it, as if he'd been bitten by a dog who had gotten just a little too hungry. The stench of blood and death rolled over onto her, and she fought the impulse to gag. Even after she'd smacked his hands away, he still came at her - fingers clawing at her clothes. His swollen, buldging lips drew towards her neck as a moan of want twisted out of him.

"I said off!" she yelled again, and shoved him away with all her might. Time to get violent, she thought as she lifted the baseball bat, and was just about to bring it down on his bloody head when she saw the second figure dragging herself into the room. This woman she didn't recognize. New neighbor? Her face was in much the same state as Jim's, blood smeared across her mouth. This one had a giant red gash where an eyeball used to be, and was scrambling along on only one leg. The other leg was clearly broken, with a fragment of bone poking through the gash in her jeans.

It was a miracle the poor woman was still managing to limp along on her good leg. Penny hesitated. Should she call an ambulence? Yeah, they were clearly drunk, but they also seemed very much in need of serious medical attention. Was the man's attempts to grope her simply an unspoken cry for help?

"Listen," Penny said, backing away. "I am going to call 911 for you guys. It's going to be all right."  
She made the mistake of turning to grab her phone. In that instant, the man had her by the hair, and was dragging her backwards. She bumped into his body, felt the cold and wet of his skin, and started to panic. Not drunk, she realized, but dead. Dead, and trying to eat her. Oh God...

She let out a scream loud enough to wake three floors as she struggled to free herself from her attacker. The woman was closing in fast, her broken fingers grasping blindly for Penny's body. Any second now, Penny expected to feel the pain of teeth sink into her neck.

A shot rang clear through the apartment, making Penny and her two attackers all freeze at the sound. None of them moved for the space of a long heartbeat, and two of them turned their partial or fully-intact heads to see what had caused the noise. The third head was currently in gooey pieces, plastered to Penny's countertops and stove. The woman, with only a fragment of her jaw left exposed to the open air, slumped to the ground.

Sheldon stood with a smoking shotgun in his hands, staring at the remains on her countertop with a satisfied smirk on his face.  
Penny said nothing, just stared at him in horror, her gaze going from him to the headless corpse that was now bleeding out all over her cute Ikea rug.  
Sheldon just killed someone. Blew her head right off. Yes, Penny had often shot at people when they trespassed on her property back in Nebraska, but always in the leg, where it would hurt but not cause serious damage. Never in the face.

"Come with me if you want to live." he drawled out, grinning at his ability to slip a science fiction reference into his situation. When Penny just stood there, the other man recovered enough from the sudden noise to realize there was a fresh warm heart in front of him, and leaned his head down once again to attempt his feast a second time.  
Penny's brain kicked into gear as she stumbled out of his grip, towards the safety wall Sheldon seemed to provide. As soon as Penny was clear of the man, Sheldon fired a second round into the poor man's head, sending his innards the way of the other woman's. He hit the floor with a dull thump.

"More of them will have entered the building by now, Penny, we have to leave." He turned towards the door and made it half way out before he realized she wasn't following him. She was instead staring at the two corpses, looking very much like she wanted to cry or vomit. Or both. Sheldon rolled his eyes, huffed once in annoyance, and entered the room again.  
"Penny, didn't you hear me? We have to get back to my room. There are more of them on the way."

When she turned to face him, her blue eyes were sparkling with tears.  
"You killed these people." she whispered in disbelief. He faltered a moment at the sight of the teardrops spilling down onto her pale cheeks.  
"They're zombies. They were trying to eat you. Of course I killed them."  
Why was she crying? He didn't understand. Shouldn't she be greatful?

"They were human beings, Sheldon. They needed help! And you murdered them!" Her voice had raised several decibles as she backed away from him. Anger quickly heated up the cold places in her heart where fear once stabbed.

Sheldon looked down his long nose at the infuriating woman, and let his gun swing at his side.  
"This is no time to discuss morals, Penny." His face was covered with the expression that clearly read _I am smarter than you, don't argue with me._ "The others have the door unlocked for now, but if the zombies make it up the stairs, they have no qualms about locking us out.  
Well, that wasn't entirely true, Sheldon thought, mildly irritated. They had no qualms about locking _him_ out. Penny, on the other hand, they would let in even if the entire hallway was crawling with zombies. He wouldn't let her know that though. It would only slow her down.

She almost refused to go with him. There was enough food in her apartment to last her a few days, and she had her gun and baseball bat. She'd be all right, wouldn't she? She could just fight off the crazy people - the zombies - on her own, as her daddy had taught her. Then another scream of agony drifted up from the street, and an explosion ripped through the night air. Her fingers gripped around her gun and baseball bat, and she nodded to Sheldon. Together, they crossed the small expanse of hallway. Sheldon's guard remained constantly up, and he kept his gun trained on the stairs as he executed the secret knock.

The door swung open, revealing three anxious faces, who relaxed visibly when they saw the face of their female companion, no worse for wear.  
"I still don't get the point of the secret knock," Howard griped as they entered their now-fortified room. "If you were a zombie, you wouldn't have bothered knocking. You would have just gnawed on the door handle."

Leonard, who had finally clicked all the locks back into place, set his gun on the bookcase by the door, and glanced glumly over at Penny. _He_ should have been the one to go rescue her, not Penny. So what if Sheldon's scores on Halo 3 were better. It had seriously put a dent in his plans for post-escape adrenaline sex.

Penny didn't notice anything that was happening. Her mind was still drenched in the blood now smeared on her counter, and the poor faceless bodies taking a dirt nap on her floor. Without a single word, she sprinted forward, shoving Sheldon out of the way, and headed for the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before the entire contents of her TGI Fridays Potato Skins lunch bubbled over into their toilet.

Again and again, she retched, until there wasn't a single ounce of food left in her stomach, and even then she continued on. She heaved until her chest hurt, and then sunk down next to the toilet bowl and lay her sweating head against the cold floor. Their disfigured bodies would never leave her thoughts, she knew. Never.  
Thankfully, she was too absorbed in her thoughts to hear Sheldon comment rather loudly,  
"She just shoved me! Well, that was rude."

**The Shift:**

Three weeks had passed since the first zombie attacks hit California. It had started in Mexico, scientists theorized, and went up into California. In that time span, it had spread across the country. People were fleeing the United States, heading for Canada, or catching boats and planes to Europe. It wouldn't be long before the plague cropped up in other countries. Even the refugees who had poured in from Mexico were now seeking shelter from everyone's friendly neighbors from the North.

Penny's instinct had been initially to run; pack up as many clothes as she could fit into a suitcase, and get the hell out of the country, along with the rest of America. The boys were insistent on staying, though. They had enough supplies and weapons to last them a good long time, and once the initial panic and influx of zombies died down, they would be able to forage the ruined city for supplies.

That's how she found herself sitting on Sheldon and Leonard's fire escape at 3 o'clock in the morning, with a gun in one hand and clutching a blanket against her chest in the other. Night lay a think tarp of darkness over the city. The electricity had long since disappeared. They were lucky to find enough batteries to keep their flashlights running. Candles provided most of their visibility needs during the evening, and the windows let in enough light during the day to function normally. Well, as normal as one can function in an apartment with four nerds, in a city infested with zombies.

Her eyes had pretty much adjusted to the darkness, and the sky was cloudless, letting the half-lit moon's light give a little more of a glow to the empty streets. Bodies of the dead still littered the pavement from the previous day's skrimishes. They'd have to be cleared away eventually, but Penny wasn't looking forward to braving the streets.

She let out a long sigh, shifted her gun in her lap, and leaned back against the fire escape. Better out here, she supposed, then inside with Howard's leering gaze and wandering hands. He'd only upped his lecherous level since the invasion started, using "we're all going to die" as an excuse to cop a feel every chance he got. A few well aimed punches to the face, and Leonard's spectacular blow-up had toned him down somewhat, but he was still a small and grope-y annoyance that she would rather avoid.

"You are doing a much better job than I'd expected, Penny," Sheldon's head popped out the window. Had she been doing her job properly and staying fully alert, his sudden appearence would have scared the crap out of her. Instead, she was bored out of her mind, so his presence was a welcome distraction.  
"Thanks sweetie," she grinned at him, then scooted over a bit so he could join her.

"Still, I noticed you started to nod off a bit, so I thought I would lend second pair of eyes. Mine are clearly more capable for the job of scouting zombies than yours."  
She snorted, and scooted a bit closer towards the heat his body was radiating. It was clear by the increase in fidgeting that her close proximity was a source of great discomfort, which only made her scoot closer. If he could flaunt his superior skills at her, she would make him pay.

"That's only because you play video games so much." she retorted.  
"My excellence at video games may indeed have something to do with my superior spotting skills, but it certainly is not the only reason. My keen mind and perfect eye sight are also contributing factors." He said it so matter-of-factly that Penny had to chuckle.

"This is no laughing matter, Penny," he continued, "my abilities are a cornerstone in keeping us all alive. You would be quite dead without my help."  
It was the chilling truth. If Sheldon hadn't have strolled in with his exceptionally large gun, she would be among the walking dead just like everyone else.

"Thank you, Sheldon." her voice dropped to a whisper that caught his attention. Even if the face of a life-changing event, Penny had remained, for the most part, her normal self, alternating between blood-thirsty rage and cheerful optimism. The influx of emotion that now choked her voice was new, and had him glancing over at her pale face in the darkness.  
"What for?" he asked, decreasing the snooty tone a little.

"For saving my life. I never properly thanked you."  
He snorted.  
"Oh, you don't have to thank..."

His words were muffled by her lips, pressed hot against his. It was her way of saying thank you, he told himself when heat rushed up his spine, nothing more. She kissed Leonard all the time. He was no different. It lasted no more than a few seconds, but that was more than enough time for lightening to explode behind his eyeballs. For a brief moment, he forgot all about the impending zombie threat, the fact that he was so dreadfully far behind on Doctor Who, and the bite of cold they never seemed to escape. He felt only the warm woman - her silken blonde hair as it blew against his face, her thin fingers that gently touched his cheek.

And then it was over. Heat and light and that quick taste of heaven disappeared from his senses just as soon as they'd come, and he was back on that balcony in the cold, with a gun and a girl and some zombies.

She left him to take the next shift, and disappeared back inside to grasp at what tiny threads of sleep she could find. She'd given him an amiable smile when she ducked through the window. Business as usual. Yet as he scanned the surrounding black for any signs of movement, he allowed himself to feel the tingle in his lips and the warmth on his face where she'd once been.

Though he would deny it to anyone, that brief moment where his world had disappeared was the thought that kept him going into the blinding sunrise.

* * *

Wooo, part 2! I hope you all enjoy it! Only 3 parts, I'm afriad, which I'll post pretty soon but PLEASE LEAVE REVIEWS!! I like them. A lot. You may even get a cookie out of the deal! 3


	3. Chapter 3

**The Routine:**

She hadn't meant for it to become a routine. When she'd kissed Sheldon on the fire escape, it had been a way of saying _Thanks for saving my ass! I'm glad I'm not zombie food! _Kissing had always been no big deal to was a way to say thanks, to reward a job well done. It was a hello, a goodbye, an invitation for something more. It had never really occurred to her that others took it as more. Sure, Leonard usually got that starry-eyed look whenever she kissed him, and then mooned after her for days in hopes of receiving another. Howard was, of course, taking every opportunity to present himself available for physical intimate contact of any kind. On the rare occasion Penny actually kissed or hugged Raj, he would usually turn an odd shade of purple and then scurry off somewhere else to either rejoice or panic - probably a little bit of both, if she had to guess.  
But Sheldon...

For Sheldon, kissing became a retreat It was a physical act that allowed him to momentarily let go of his worries, his unspoken fears -his brain - and simply feel. Being who he was, this was a pleasure not often experienced, akin only, perhaps, to the Friday night _Battlestar Galactica_ episodes he allowed himself to get sucked into. In the face of such a horrifying and cataclysmic world-altering event, he decided to allow himself a few more pleasures outside his normal realm of entertainment, especially since he wouldn't get to watch a re-run of BSG any time soon. Or ever.

Kissing Penny had been the next logical step, once he decided he would use that form of stimulus to escape. She was physically pleasing to look at, after all, and also the only woman in the entire city he know wasn't infected. Her proximity was convenient - he wouldn't have to dodge roll his way around the city just to see her. Then there was that little matter of the way the sun seemed to explode behind his eyelids the first time they kissed, but that was only a secondary requirement. The only complication he could foresee was the other men getting jealous. Despite his certainty on the matter, the others didn't see him as the alpha male, so he had no claim to her in that respect. Not to mention if he even attempted to use the words "alpha male" and "subservient female" around her, she'd most likely remove his testicles with that gun she knew how to wield so well.

He didn't exactly like the idea of the others using her in the same way, however, nor did he suspect she would relish in the idea, if her constant threats towards Howard were any indication. Stealth would be of the upmost importance. On the one hand, it would be difficult, since they all now occupied close quarters and privacy was very limiting. On the other, there was a whole city full of emptiness he could take advantage of.  
Sheldon attempted to rationalize his thinking over the course of about three days, trying to come up with a reasonable way to explain to Penny why he intended to use her as his new form of escapism. When no sound theory presented itself, he instead did a most un-Sheldon-like thing, and acted.

No thinking.  
No rationalizing.

Raj and Howard were scouting the area for more supplies, and Leonard spent the night with the Dorsin brothers, a pair of survivalist twins from three blocks down who, like them, decided to wait out the invasion in the comfort of their own heavily foritfied apartment. "Forging allies", as Leonard liked to put it. This put Penny and Sheldon alone in the apartment for the first time in a very long time. He found her curled up on the couch, staring at the ceiling as if it were stars. Her head rested comfortably on her folded arms, and her thin bare legs stretched down the length of the couch. At that moment, he didn't matter so much that she was laying in his spot. When she caught sight of his tall form looming over here, she smiled up at him.

"Hey Sheldon," she stretched like a cat, long limbs bending against sunlight. "I think I dozed off there for a second."  
Don't think.  
He sat down on the small sliver of couch her body didn't touch, and gripped the back of the couch and the armrest as if they were his link to sanity.  
Don't think.  
His agitation had her eyes shifting in concern, and she started to sit up.  
Don't think.  
He leapt.

Before she could speak or he could change his mind, he closed the space between them and crushed his mouth down on hers. He was too swamped with nerves at first to enjoy it. A second passed, then two as he waited for her to smack him or (hopefully!) kiss him back. When nothing happened, he slanted his mouth, kissed her again, softer this time. Just like Apollo and Starbuck, he told himself. Just like them. Then she broke, her lips moved back, and he felt himself sucked into heaven again.

That peaceful, warm place that erupted out when their lips touched swallowed him up. Only her mouth against his remained, only her fingers that curled against the back of his neck. His mind didn't try to rationalize or quantify. His brain no longer listed off the constant threats that plagued him, or the things he should be worrying about. He simply felt.

He felt good.

When attempting to explain the situation to herself later, Penny would chalk it up to being desperate. It had been a long time since she'd had any itches scratched, and with the alternating boredom and adrenaline that was constantly flooding her system in the last three weeks, she was very very itchy.

"You are simply replacing the stimulus I formerly used to enjoy myself," he fumbled over an explanation, with his brain still fogged from their kiss. "I no longer have the power of the TARDIS, vipers, and wormhole technology at my fingertips, so I need you." Looking away, he added, "For some reason, kissing you makes me this whole zombie situation seem less... overwhelming."

She should have been offended, since she was basically being used as a toy for his pleasure. Tumbling awkwardly from Sheldon, the words didn't seem quite so offensive, plus the last bit made her heart do a nice little flop in her chest. She chose not to dwell over it, but instead grip his face between her hands and kiss him harder than she'd ever kissed anyone. If he wanted escapism, she'd show him escapism.

Those minutes (or, okay, maybe more like an hour) on the couch rapidly turned into habit. Never on the couch again, not unless they were sure the boys were gone for the day, but they would find other ways to sneak a kiss or two. Or lots more.

**The Apartment:**

He came home one night, covered in blood, bits of someone else's spleen stuck fast to his sleeve. Raj was just as gored up, and had defined teeth marks all up and down his paint ball shoulder pads. Leonard stood at the ready with towels (to wipe away the gore) and a gun (in case anyone was bitten.) Howard got right to work picking off various extra body pieces that had gotten stuck to his friends, and dropped them in a bowl. They would be used later as bait. The minute Sheldon stepped through the door and focused his darkened eyes on her, she knew what her job was going to be.

She too had experienced the terror of a swarm of zombies as they stumbled down an alley towards you. She'd seen the light leave someone's eyes as zombies reached their jugular and pulled, hard. She'd lost too much sleep over it, and knew Sheldon didn't want to lose any more. As Leonard and Howard pecked at him like mother hens, he kept his eyes only on Penny, and she didn't dare look away.

"I'm going to see if there's any more water in the traps on my fire escape." she murmured. Leonard's eyes perked up.  
"Do you need any help?" he asked, desperate for some alone time with the woman he loved. She just shook her head, grabbed her gun, and set about undoing the locks.

She slept at the boys' apartment because it was safer, and because no matter how much she'd scrubbed, she couldn't get the blood stains out of the floor, and that totally freaked her out. But they kept her place at the ready, storing extra supplies there and the like. It wasn't a place she liked to be alone, thanks to what happened last time, but occasionally it was nice to have a safe(ish) place away from everyone else to just think. She had made it her job to keep everything in order over there, since it was still technically her apartment. It had also become a nice place for her and Sheldon to escape to when things got... tough. And today, things were definitely tough.

She shut the door but didn't lock it, then sat down on her couch and waited. With every creak of the apartment, she jumped, remembering the last time she was in her apartment without locking the door. The boys had long since set up early warning systems that would trip should any zombies enter the building, so she knew she was okay. Still, the waiting was tense.  
Seconds went by. A minute. Two minutes. What was taking him so long? Could she have mis-read the look in his eyes? Maybe he needed to be alone...

Then his knock came at the door.

_Knock knock knock.  
_"Penny."  
_Knock knock knock._  
"Penny."  
_Knock knock knock_.  
"Penny."  
In a whispered voice.

"It's open," she hissed back. The door swung open, and Sheldon stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. He focused all his energy on the lock for a moment, sliding it into place, then turned to her. Most of the blood had been wiped away, and he'd changed his shirt so it wasn't covered in the stuff, but the hurt was still just as strong in his eyes.

"Oh sweetie," she murmured, and held out her arms. In two strides, he crossed to her, and crushed himself against her. She'd expected her face to be eaten off, perhaps even sex, but what she got shook her to the core. Sheldon sank to his knees in front of her, shaking, and pressed his face into her stomach. It wasn't until she felt the moisture seep through her tank top that she realized he was crying.

Sheldon? Cry? She hardly thought it possible. Explode, maybe, but cry? As she too sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around his trembling form, she felt her heart begin to crack. His face was distorted in the pain of all the lives he'd watched disappear. She leaned them both against the couch, feet tucked under her as she rocked him back and forth. The angle was awkward, he was taller than she, but he bent and clutched and sobbed so hard it didn't seem to matter.

She began to mumble nothings, more to calm herself than him, since he was too far gone to hear her, and pressed wet kisses onto the top of his spiky head. She felt herself falling apart at the mere sight of him. If a robot like Sheldon was coming undone, surely she had no chance at all. Tears for his pain, and the pain that now lingered like a fog over the city, spilled silently down her cheeks. There were no sobs, no wracking cries of her own, just the tears that mingled with his.  
He reached up a hand and grabbed the front of her tank top, dragging her mouth down toward him.

"I don't want to feel any more Penny," his voice was ragged from crying. "Help me to not feel."

Ten minutes, two orgasms, and one very destroyed bra later, they lay sprawled out on her rug, wedged between the sofa and the coffee table, both completely unable to move. Zombies could have kicked in the front door and neither of them would have bothered to get up. Sheldon stared up at the ceiling, simultaneously confused and astounded by the events that had just occurred. He'd had sex before - one does not grow up in a small town without having a woman's lovely lady bits shoved at one as soon as puberty set in. He'd just never had Penny sex before. Penny sex made thinking absolutely impossible, even if he'd wanted to.

Penny sex took the sun that had previously exploded behind his eyelids, gathered up the pieces, set it ablaze, and burned it hot and bright all over his body before making it explode all over again. Whatever heaven he was disputed wasn't there, he now firmly found in her body.  
Kissing would not be enough anymore, he knew. Oh no.

"That was much more effective in quieting my constant stream of thoughts." he stated, quite matter-of-factly. Penny, who until this point had smooshed herself as close to the couch as possible, ass pressed against the rough fabric, in case Sheldon needed his space, leaned her head against his shoulder, and wrapped an arm around his thin waist. His long fingers abscently traced the smooth skin of her arm as he took a moment to study the intense relaxation his body was now dipping into.

"Is there any chance we could repeat this process?" he asked quiety.  
She leaned up, and nipped his ear, lips forming into a smile as his breath hitched.  
"Honey, we can repeat this process as many times as you'd like."

**The Dawn:**

Blood seemed to drip from the sky, blazing red and beautiful as the sun rose over the city. It had been exactly two months and twelve days since the first zombie attack had occured, and finally help had arrived. Five people stood in their apartment, gazing out the window, watching the battle-ready soldiers rush through the streets, cutting down every undead creature that crossed their path. As the undead threat drained out of the city, survivors slowly crept back in to pick up the pieces of their fragmented lives.

Unwilling to believe the threat was finally gone, that they were no longer alone, Penny and the boys descended the stairs, fully armored, weapons in hand, and slipped unnoticed onto the streets. Sure enough, human beings were limping through the newborn sunlight, past the wrecked buildings and the rotting, festering corpses that had yet to be cleared away. No one was lunging for their throats. No one shot at them because they were scavanging for food in the wrong areas. People simply... lived.  
Penny took a few tentative steps forward, gun limp at her side.

There was Mr. Marlow, the man who ran the wine shop down on 82nd, and his wife. Jessica and her interesting Salsa-dancing lover from 2a. That annoying man who liked to shout at her every time he passed her on his bike. All alive. Society would start to rebuild itself, she knew. It would take weeks before the city would start functioning at a fraction of its normality, months before people stopped being quarintined for sneezing, but the worst was over.

There was more hard work ahead of them. They no longer had just themselves to think of, and to answer to. Rules would once again come into play, life would yet again change durastically.

Long fingers twined around hers, and the grip on her hand was firm. She looked up to see Sheldon standing beside her, looking out at the street with grim determination.  
They both ignored the sputtering disbelief resounding from the rest behind them.  
Nothing would ever be the same. As they stood together and faced the dawn, they both silently accepted this in their own way, and were almost glad. Zombies ripped apart a large percentage of the population, governments were de-stablized and thrown into chaos, and - quietly - two people fell in love.

"I guess we should go help with the cleanup," Leonard appeared at their side, looking rather glum at his realization.  
"Good idea, Leonard." Howard joined them, with a silent Raj in tow. "There are desperate, frightened women out there just waiting to be comforted."  
Penny said nothing, just smiled and squeezed Sheldon's hand as the five of them squared off and faced the morning.


End file.
